Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Pronoun Conundrum

Green Bean figured out the pronoun "me" long ago, that when he uses it, it refers to himself. All his sentences were "Me weally wuv my bunny," "Me want to do it!" "Me have some," etc.

Just yesterday and today he has begun to use "I". And now that he realizes he's been using "me" incorrectly, it sounds wrong to him in every sentence. He now says, "Hey! Let I do it!" "Give I one cookie, please," "You let I turn the water on?"

I wonder how many other nuances of language he's picked up on consciously and changed without me noticing.

Peanut Butter, on the other hand, uses very few words. He communicates nonverbally, through his tone of voice. He's the LOUDEST little boy I've ever met. My ears are hypersensitive, and loud noises tend to cause me pain, but I think he's working on dulling my hearing for me. In a year or two no baby's cry will bother me again. I'll be blissfully unaware of anyone's needs unless they write it out and stick it in front of me.

Really, my nonverbal son is pretty much intelligable just by the expression he uses and his tone of voice. We give him something and it sounds like he told us, "thank you!" even though no words came out. I begin preparing supper and he heads over to his high chair, stretches his arms up as if he's trying pull himself up, and makes, "Please notice me, I'm hungry and I want food" noises. I ask him if he wants some milk, and he makes a pleased /satisfied squeal and heads for the fridge where I hand him his sippy cup. I think he could get by indefinitely with what he's mastered so far, but here's one mama who hopes that learning to speak words will significantly decrease the number of times he howls at the top of his lungs each day.

1 comment:

Bea said...

I find these milestones - especially those related to language acquisition - so fascinating. (But you know that about me already, don't you?)